Ammo & Reloading Discussion

I was wondering if some of you more experienced gentlemen could help answer a question for me. Is the powder from surplus ammunition corrosive itself or is it just the primers that hold the corrosive properties? I know all powder is corrosive on some level but isn't it the primer alone that folks refer to when speaking of "corrosive ammo".

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.”- Noah Webster

right, i guess i was wondering if there was anything in the older surplus powders that would make it anymore corrosive than domestic and or modern powders. Probably a pretty dumb question but i have a couple of pounds left over from rounds that i had pulled and was thinking about using it on some rainy day.

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.”- Noah Webster

No the old primers had salts and murcurium in them. That is what makes them corrosive. You can take a fired and empty shell. Place it in you chamber for a week and you barrel will start to rust. And thats just because of the murcurium. Everyone forgets about the mircurium.

The old powders were not at all corrosive. They are very dirty though. One shot with that stuff and it takes at least five patches to get it clean again.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."Aristotle

I used some "re-purposed" powder from mil-surp I had pulled when I was "testing" to see if I could get away with using .308's , and the powder did work pretty good , for what I was doing . The only caution I might throw out is to check the available data for what our Soviet Bloc friends used weight-wise , and load two or three rounds a half grain light to start with .Since all the powder I was using came from the same case , I wasn't worried about varience in the powder , but it might be something to be aware of . Like mixing powders from Bulgarian & Russian or Czech rounds . That could get interesting .